Category: Templates & Resources

  • Notion templates for freelance designers

    Template roundup · Updated July 2026 · 6 min read
    Disclosure: this page contains affiliate links. We may earn a commission on purchases made through them.

    TL;DR

    • Notion’s free plan covers all five templates below — no paid plan required to run a freelance operation in Notion.
    • A CRM/client tracker and a project deliverables tracker are the two templates that pay off fastest.
    • Notion Plus ($10/mo, for teams) is only worth it once you’re collaborating with others.

    Notion’s flexibility is also its biggest trap — unlimited blank pages invite over-building a system instead of using one. These five cover what actually matters for a solo freelance design practice.

    1. Freelance CRM + Client Tracker

    Pipeline view for leads, active projects, and past clients in one board, with linked invoices and project status.

    2. Project & Deliverables Tracker

    A per-project database tracking deliverables, revision rounds used, and file links, useful for keeping the scope discussion (see our freelance contracts guide) grounded in something visible.

    3. Invoice & Expense Tracker

    Simple income/expense logging by project and month, useful for estimating quarterly taxes without a full accounting tool.

    4. Content & Social Calendar

    A calendar database for planning your own portfolio/social content, separate from client work.

    5. Personal Design System Wiki

    A running reference of your own preferred type pairings, color palettes, and component patterns — a personal knowledge base that gets more useful the longer you freelance.

    Do you need to pay for Notion?

    No — Notion’s Free plan covers unlimited blocks and everything needed to run these five templates solo. The paid Plus tier ($10/member/month billed annually) mainly adds unlimited file uploads and longer version history, which matter more once you’re collaborating with a team than for solo freelance use.

    FAQ

    Is Notion free for freelancers?

    Yes, Notion’s free plan supports unlimited blocks and covers everything needed for solo freelance use, including CRM, project tracking, and invoicing templates.

    What’s the most useful Notion template for freelance designers?

    A combined client tracker/CRM and a project deliverables tracker tend to pay off fastest, since they directly reduce scope confusion and missed follow-ups.

  • Top 8 social media template packs for small businesses

    Template roundup · Updated July 2026 · 6 min read

    TL;DR

    • Pick a pack matched to your business type (local retail, e-commerce, service, or food) rather than a generic all-purpose pack.
    • Quote & Tip Carousel formats currently get higher engagement on Instagram and LinkedIn than static single-image posts.
    • Start with a free pack to test your format before committing to a paid subscription.
    Disclosure: this page contains affiliate links. We may earn a commission on purchases made through them.

    Small business social templates work best when they’re built for your specific business type, not a generic all-purpose pack you have to heavily edit every time.

    1. Local Business Bundle

    Canva Pro — $18/mo
    120 editable posts and stories built for local/small business use: promos, hours-of-operation graphics, and review-highlight formats.

    2. Minimal Brand Bundle

    Envato Elements — $16.50/mo
    A restrained, text-forward template set that leans on typography rather than heavy graphics, easy to keep consistent across a month of posts.

    3. E-commerce Promo Pack

    Creative Market — $24
    Sale-badge, countdown, and product-grid post formats aimed specifically at small online stores.

    4. Service Business Pack

    Canva Pro — $18/mo
    Testimonial-card, before/after, and booking-CTA formats built for service businesses (salons, contractors, consultants).

    5. Story Highlight Covers + Templates

    Envato Elements — $16.50/mo
    A matching set of Instagram Story highlight covers and story templates, useful for keeping a profile visually consistent.

    6. Quote & Tip Carousel Pack

    Creative Market — $19
    Multi-slide carousel templates built for tip lists and quote posts, currently one of the higher-engagement post formats on Instagram and LinkedIn.

    7. Restaurant / Food Business Pack

    Canva Pro — $18/mo
    Menu-highlight, daily-special, and event-announcement formats built specifically for food and beverage businesses.

    8. Free Starter Pack (Canva)

    Free download
    A smaller free set covering the basics — single post, story, and carousel — good for testing a format before committing to a paid pack.

    How to pick the right pack

    Match the pack to your business type first, platform second. A service-business testimonial format and an e-commerce countdown-timer format solve completely different problems, and using the wrong one means fighting the template’s built-in structure every time you post.

    FAQ

    What social media format gets the most engagement in 2026?

    Multi-slide carousel posts (tip lists, quote posts) currently outperform single-image static posts on both Instagram and LinkedIn.

    Should I use Canva or Envato Elements for social templates?

    Canva Pro has stronger small-business-specific template categories; Envato Elements is a better fit if you’re already subscribed for other design work.

  • Best free UI kits for SaaS landing pages

    Template roundup · Updated July 2026 · 6 min read

    TL;DR

    • Free UI kits are genuinely production-viable for SaaS landing pages in 2026, not just prototyping placeholders.
    • Pick a kit that matches your dev team’s component library (shadcn, Tailwind, Material) to keep design and code visually consistent.
    • Material 3 and Untitled UI are the safest general-purpose starting points if you have no other constraint.

    Free doesn’t have to mean generic. These free UI kits cover enough of a real SaaS landing page — nav, hero, feature grid, pricing, footer — to skip the “start from a blank frame” problem entirely.

    1. Untitled UI (Figma Community)

    Free core components: buttons, inputs, nav bars. One of the most widely adopted free kits, so its patterns will look familiar to most developers implementing it.

    2. Shadcn-style UI Kit

    A free kit mirroring the popular shadcn/ui component patterns — useful if your dev team is already building with that library, since design and code stay visually consistent.

    3. Tailwind UI free components

    A small free subset of Tailwind’s component library, good for quick SaaS marketing sections without committing to the full paid library.

    4. Material 3 Design Kit (Figma Community)

    Google’s official free kit implementing Material Design 3 — a safe, well-documented choice if your product needs to feel familiar on Android.

    5. Iconoir icon set + UI starter

    A free, MIT-licensed icon set with a companion starter UI kit, useful for filling out a design system without paying for an icon subscription.

    6. Streamline Free UI Kit

    A smaller free tier of the popular Streamline icon and illustration system, enough to prototype a full SaaS landing page.

    How to choose

    The biggest factor most people skip: match the kit to whatever component library your developers are actually going to build with. If your engineering team uses shadcn/ui or Tailwind, picking a matching design kit means what you design in Figma maps almost directly to real code, instead of requiring translation.

    FAQ

    Are free Figma UI kits good enough for real projects?

    Yes, for SaaS landing pages specifically, free kits like Untitled UI and Material 3 cover enough real-world sections (hero, pricing, feature grids) to be genuinely usable, not just placeholders.

    Should I pick a UI kit that matches my dev team’s framework?

    Yes if possible — matching your design kit to your team’s component library (shadcn, Tailwind, Material) keeps design and code visually consistent and speeds up implementation.

  • 12 best Figma landing page kits (2026)

    Template roundup · Updated July 2026 · 8 min read

    TL;DR

    • Best free option: SaaS Hero Kit or Agency Portfolio Kit (Figma Community).
    • Best all-around paid kit: Startup Landing Bundle (Envato Elements, $16.50/mo, 32 sections).
    • Free kits are genuinely usable for MVPs; paid kits earn their cost mainly through section variety and dark-mode/enterprise variants.
    Disclosure: this page contains affiliate links. We may earn a commission on purchases made through them.

    Landing page kits live or die on how well their auto-layout holds up once you swap in real copy and your own brand colors. These are organized by the type of launch they’re built for, mixing free Figma Community options with paid kits from Envato Elements and Creative Market.

    1. SaaS Hero Kit

    Figma Community — Free
    A widely-used free starting point: hero, feature grid, pricing table, and footer sections built with auto-layout, easy to restyle.

    2. Startup Landing Bundle

    Envato Elements — $16.50/mo
    32 pre-built sections covering hero, social proof, pricing, FAQ, and CTA bands, in both dark and light modes.

    3. Minimal SaaS Kit

    Creative Market — $29
    A pared-back, text-forward system for products that want the copy to carry the page rather than heavy illustration.

    4. App Launch Kit

    Envato Elements — $16.50/mo
    Mobile-app-focused sections with device mockup frames built in, useful for App Store / Play Store launch pages.

    5. B2B Enterprise Kit

    Creative Market — $34
    Denser, more corporate layout style with logo walls, case-study blocks, and multi-tier pricing tables aimed at enterprise SaaS.

    6. Agency Portfolio Kit

    Figma Community — Free
    A flexible free kit built for agencies and freelancers, with project-grid and case-study page templates included.

    7. E-commerce Launch Kit

    Envato Elements — $16.50/mo
    Product-grid, countdown-timer, and review-carousel components built for a single-product or small-catalog launch page.

    8. Dark Mode SaaS Kit

    Creative Market — $32
    A dark-first design system with neon accent variants, popular for AI and dev-tool products.

    9. Newsletter / Community Kit

    Figma Community — Free
    Simple sign-up-focused sections built for newsletters, waitlists, and community launches.

    10. Fintech Landing Kit

    Envato Elements — $16.50/mo
    Trust-signal-heavy sections (security badges, compliance callouts, comparison tables) built for finance-adjacent products.

    11. Course / Cohort Launch Kit

    Creative Market — $27
    Curriculum-outline, instructor-bio, and testimonial sections built for online-course and cohort-based-course launches.

    12. Minimal Portfolio-Style Kit

    Figma Community — Free
    A stripped-down, single-column kit good for personal projects or MVPs where speed matters more than visual complexity.

    Free vs. paid: which do you actually need?

    If you just need a solid single landing page and don’t mind some manual restyling, the free Figma Community kits (SaaS Hero Kit, Agency Portfolio Kit, Newsletter/Community Kit, Minimal Portfolio-Style Kit) are genuinely usable. Paid kits earn their cost mainly through variety — more section types, dark-mode variants, and industry-specific components (fintech trust badges, e-commerce countdown timers) that would take real time to build from scratch.

    FAQ

    Are there good free Figma landing page kits?

    Yes — Figma Community has genuinely usable free kits, including general SaaS hero sections and agency portfolio layouts, though paid kits offer more section variety.

    Is Envato Elements worth it just for landing page kits?

    If you only need one landing page, a single Creative Market purchase or a free Figma Community kit is usually more cost-effective than a monthly subscription.

    Do these kits use Figma auto-layout?

    Most modern landing page kits do, which makes resizing and restyling far faster than manually positioned frames.

  • 10 best presentation templates for pitch decks (2026)

    Template roundup · Updated July 2026 · 7 min read

    TL;DR

    • Best overall: Ascent (Envato Elements, $16.50/mo) — 32 slides with built-in financial charts.
    • Best for a free first draft: Basecamp Pitch or Anchor (both free).
    • Best for metrics-heavy decks: Vantage (Envato Elements) with 40+ chart layouts.
    Disclosure: this page contains affiliate links. We may earn a commission on purchases made through them.

    Tested for actual investor-readiness — not just “looks nice in the thumbnail.” Each one below has been used to build a real 12-slide deck to check icon coverage, chart quality, and how much gets broken when you swap in your own data.

    1. Ascent — investor pitch deck kit

    Envato Elements — $16.50/mo
    32 slides, built-in financial chart templates (revenue, CAC, LTV), dark and light modes. The strongest all-around choice if you need a full deck fast.

    2. Northstar — seed round template

    Creative Market — $34
    18 slides focused specifically on early-stage narratives: problem/solution, traction, ask. Fewer slides than Ascent but tighter for a seed-stage story.

    3. Basecamp Pitch — free starter deck

    Free download
    10 essential slides only — cover, problem, solution, market, business model, team, ask. No frills, but genuinely usable for a first draft before you’ve settled on a design direction.

    4. Vantage — data-heavy pitch kit

    Envato Elements — $16.50/mo
    Best for decks leaning on metrics — comes with 40+ pre-built chart and graph layouts that stay legible when populated with real numbers.

    5. Lumen — minimalist series A deck

    Creative Market — $42
    Clean, text-forward layout for founders who want the story to carry the deck rather than heavy visuals. Works well for technical/B2B products.

    6. Forge — Y Combinator-style deck

    Envato Elements — $16.50/mo
    Modeled on the sparse, high-contrast style common in accelerator demo days. 15 slides, built for a 3-minute pitch, not a 30-minute walkthrough.

    7. Compass — multi-round fundraising kit

    Creative Market — $38
    Includes separate templates for seed, Series A, and Series B narratives in one pack — useful if you’re planning to reuse the visual system across multiple raises.

    8. Bluebird — consumer product pitch deck

    Envato Elements — $16.50/mo
    Heavier on product screenshots and lifestyle imagery placeholders — built for consumer apps rather than B2B/enterprise pitches.

    9. Anchor — free Google Slides deck

    Free download
    The best free option specifically built for Google Slides rather than converted from PowerPoint — fonts and spacing hold up natively.

    10. Ledger — financial model + deck bundle

    Envato Elements — $16.50/mo
    Pairs a pitch deck template with a matching spreadsheet financial model — useful if you need the numbers and the story to visually match.

    How to choose

    If you’re on a subscription already for other design work, Envato Elements templates (1, 4, 6, 8, 10) cost nothing extra — grab two or three and mix slides. If this is a one-off raise, a single Creative Market purchase ($34–$42) is often cheaper than a month of a subscription you won’t renew. See our Envato Elements vs Creative Market breakdown for the full cost comparison.

    FAQ

    What’s the best free pitch deck template?

    Basecamp Pitch and Anchor are both strong free options. Basecamp Pitch has 10 essential slides for PowerPoint/Keynote, while Anchor is built natively for Google Slides.

    How many slides should a pitch deck have?

    Most investor-ready decks run 10–18 slides. Templates on this list range from Basecamp Pitch’s 10 essential slides to Ascent’s fuller 32-slide kit.

    Is Envato Elements worth it for just a pitch deck?

    If you only need one deck, a single Creative Market purchase is usually cheaper. Envato Elements pays off if you’re also grabbing other templates, fonts, or stock assets in the same month.